Ben was echoing a lot of the discussion here, particularly with respect to the emotional impact of the changes, and the use of loyalty to drive irrational behaviour.

I think this is where the spreadsheet/pareto led "McKinsey" approach hits the wall, it is very difficult to quantify emotion, even though it's very easy often to understand the fairly simply psychology that underlies how it interacts with a loyalty scheme and associated decision making. I thought he hit all the right points, there was one about there needing to be an element of arbitrage or else it becomes a simple RoI calculation on what turns into quite a small benefit if you're flying J anyway. I've been watching a lot of Rory Sutherland "shorts" recently, and he's very good on psychology and behavioural science in a way BA patently are not. Worth a look.

I'm sure there are very similar conversations inside Waterside by the way. These are not difficult conclusions to reach. But it's very nice to have directional thinking somewhat validated by a genuine expert. As I'm not going to drop £50K to get GGL back, and I should have GfL, I'm perfectly happy to spend a year with Flying Blue. I may even push to renew Ultimate. I wish FB flew from Gatwick though.